Gumbercules!! writes: After the massive 600mbps DDOS on http://krebsonsecurity.com/ last week that forced Akamai to withdraw the (pro-bono) DDOS protection they offered the site, krebsonsecurity.com is now back online, hosted by Google.

Following Brian Krebs breaking an article on vDOS (https://developers.slashdot.org/story/16/09/08/2050238/israeli-ddos-provider-vdos-earned-600000-in-two-years), leading to the arrest of the two founders, his site was hit with a record breaking DDOS. It will certainly be an interesting test of Google's ability to provide DDOS protection to clients.

schwit1 writes: President Barack Obama used a pseudonym in email communications with Hillary Clinton and others, according to FBI records made public Friday. The disclosure came as the FBI released its second batch of documents from its investigation into Clinton’s private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.

The 189 pages the bureau released includes interviews with some of Clinton’s closest aides, such as Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills; senior State Department officials; and even Marcel Lazar, better known as the Romanian hacker “Guccifer.”

In an April 5, 2016 interview with the FBI, Abedin was shown an email exchange between Clinton and Obama, but the longtime Clinton aide did not recognize the name of the sender.

"Once informed that the sender's name is believed to be pseudonym used by the president, Abedin exclaimed: 'How is this not classified?'" the report says. "Abedin then expressed her amazement at the president's use of a pseudonym and asked if she could have a copy of the email."Link to Original Source

wiredmikey writes: The White House today announced that Brigadier General (retired) Gregory J. Touhill has been named the first Federal Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). Back in February, President Barack Obama unveiled a cybersecurity "national action plan" (CNAP) which called for an overhaul of aging government networks and a high-level commission to boost security awareness. As part of the plan, the White House said it would hire a federal CISO to direct cybersecurity across the federal government. General Touhill is currently the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Cybersecurity and Communications in the Office of Cybersecurity and Communications (CS&C) at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The key hire comes at a time when the government needs cybersecurity talent more than ever. Earlier this week a report published a U.S. House of Representatives Committee said the data breaches disclosed by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) last year were a result of culture and leadership failures, and should not be blamed on technology.

hackingbear writes: Chinese high-energy physicists proposed four years ago to build a particle collider four times the size of the Large Hadron Collider in Europe. On Sunday, Dr Yang Chen-ning, co-winner of the Nobel Prize in physics in 1957 and now living on campus at Tsinghua University in Beijing, released an article on WeChat opposing the construction of the collider. He said the project would become an investment “black hole” with little scientific value or benefit to society, sucking resources away from other research sectors such as life sciences and quantum physics. Yang’s article hit nearly all social media platforms and internet news portals, drawing tens of thousands of positive comments over the last couple of days. The first stage of the project was estimated to cost 40 billion yuan (US$6 billion) by 2030, and the total cost would exceed 140 billion yuan (US$21 billion) when construction is completed in 2050, making it the most expensive research facility built in China. Yang’s main argument was that China would not succeed where the United States had failed. A similar project had been proposed in the US but was eventually cancelled in 2012 as the construction far exceeded the initial budget. Yang said existing facilities including the Large Hadron Collider contributed little to the increase of human knowledge and was irrelevant to most people’s daily lives. But Dr Wang Yifang, lead scientist of the project with the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of High Energy Physics, argued research in high energy physics lead to the world wide web, mobile phone touch screens and magnetic resonance imaging in hospitals, among other technological breakthroughs.

China was early this morning expected to launch its Gaofen-10 Earth observation satellite from Taiyuan, following the issuance of an airspace exclusion zone days in advance. However, it seems the launch did not go to plan. Gaofen-10, nominally part of the ‘CHEOS’ Earth observation system for civilian purposes, was due to be launched on a Long March 4C rocket between 18:46 and 19:11 UTC on Wednesday (02:46-03:11 Thursday Beijing time). China usually releases information of launches once payloads are successfully heading towards their target orbits around an hour after launch. Much earlier, spectators and insiders often share details and photos of the launch on social media.

However, many hours after the launch window passed there was still silence, with the launch timing and location of the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre apparently limiting opportunities for outside viewers.

The launch however was not scrubbed, as first stage launch debris was found as expected along the flight path, suggesting that some failure occurred with the upper stage.

Like today’s Falcon 9 failure, this Chinese failure could have a rippling effect on their ambitious plans this fall, including the launch of their next space station followed by a 30-day manned mission.

An anonymous reader writes: Politico has an article today which states that An unknown individual using the encrypted privacy tool Tor to hide their tracks accessed an email account on a Clinton family server, the FBI revealed Friday.

The FBI disclosed the event in its newly released report on the former secretary of state’s handling of classified information.
According to the bureau’s review of server logs, someone accessed an email account on Jan. 5, 2013, using three IP addresses known to serve as Tor “exit nodes”

davemc writes: Palo Alto to ban software coding firms? Seems there is a little-known (and definitely not enforced) regulation on R&D. Including software coding. I guess the residents in Palo Alto already have their slice of the pie, so want to ban pies altogether.

"... the mayor is looking to enforce, in some form, an all-but-forgotten zoning regulation that bans companies whose primary business is research and development, including software coding. (To repeat: The mayor is considering enforcing a ban on coding at ground zero of Silicon Valley.)"

alir1272 writes: Russians were responsible for the recent breach of Arizona’s voter registration system, the FBI told state officials in June.

Matt Roberts, a spokesman for Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan said on Monday that FBI investigators did not say whether the hackers were working for the Russian government or not, the Washington Post reported. He said hackers gained access after stealing the username and password of an election official in Gila County, rather than compromising the state or county system.

I was about to mention NYC. I wouldn't say it works fine, but it does work better than most places. The subway stations also have a fairly restricted number of people at a time though, and that is where it works best for me. Also, not everybody business and local is trying to down on it 24/7. I wonder what the peak usage is? I guarantee it is much lower than other places.

His point is that the government will never had enough of oversight of itself -- it shouldn't have had this bad of a failure for so long -- to fix these problems. Saying it would all be better if the government just did something it historically never been able to do well is a fool's dream. Lacking a profit motive, governments have very little natural force correcting them, especially when it comes to bureaucrats paid according to union standards and protected by them. They really don't care if anything works out at long as then can show then put forth even the smallest effort.

You asking for more regulation after giving tax money to a corporation reminds me of the Ronald Reagan quote: "If is move, tax it. It is keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it."

The problem with government run anything (from democratic socialism to Marxism) is that it never works out like its planned, and those that support it just keep up with the same hitting their head again the wall mantra, "But that wasn't what was supposed to happen; that wasn't real [insert personal economic philosophy]." They never seem to learn that there will always be a huge gulf between theory and practice when it comes to the political economy. Capitalism self corrects around it and uses our worst side -- the greed -- to make the world better.

wnfJv8eC writes: There needs to a user site to survey distro packages. I just went to remove xfsprogs, some hang over from SGI from the early, very early 2000s. Why is Gnome dependent on this package? Remove it, remove Gnome? Really? The dependency tree is all screwed up. Never mind XFS, which by now I can't imagine anyone using, why aren't such addons a plugin? Why are they still supported. Who uses them. Once Linux dropped support for minix. Now one used it.It's time for a house cleaning. That starts with a good vote on what is and isn't being used. Then dependency trees can be corrected, not just grandfathered in.There are many examples of stupid dependencies. For example Rhythmbox requires gvfs-afc, which rpm -qi describes as "This package provides support for reading files on mobile devices including phones and music players to applications using gvfs."So if I never plug my phone or other mobile device into my computer to play music I must have this thing loaded and running? But remove gvfs-afc, and pull Rhythmbox. The dependency is all wrong.

feylikurds writes: Facebook has been blocking and banning users for posting Kurdish or anti-Turkish material. Many screenshots exists of Facebook notifying people for such.

You can insult any single historical figure that you like on Facebook except one = Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal "Ataturk". However, he should not receive special treatment and be protected from criticism, but rather should be treated and examined like everyone else.

In order to be accessible within Turkey, Facebook has allowed the repressive Turkish government to set the censorship rules for billions of their users all around the globe. Facebook censors Kurds on behalf of Turkey. To show the world how unjust this policy is, this group discusses Facebook's censorship policy as it relates to Kurds and discussions on how to get Facebook to change its unfair and discriminatory policy.

Lucas123 writes: Security researcher Samy Kamkar posted a video today demonstrating a device he created that he calls OwnStar that can intercept communications between GM's RemoteLink mobile app and the OnStar cloud service in order to unlock and start an OnStar equipped car. Kamkar said that after a user opens the OnStar Remote Link app on his or her mobile phone "near the OwnStar device," OwnStar intercepts the communication and sends "data packets to the mobile device to acquire additional credentials. The OwnStar device then notifies the attacker about the new vehicle that the hacker has access to for an indefinite period of time, including its location, make and model. And at that point, the hacker can use the Remote Link app to control the vehicle. Kamkar said GM is aware of the security hole and is working on a fix.

McGruber writes: Hillview, Kentucky resident William H. Merideth describes his Sunday afternoon: "Sunday afternoon, the kids – my girls – were out on the back deck, and the neighbors were out in their yard," Merideth said. "And they come in and said, 'Dad, there’s a drone out here, flying over everybody’s yard.'"

Merideth's neighbors saw it too. "It was just hovering above our house and it stayed for a few moments and then she finally waved and it took off," said neighbor Kim VanMeter. VanMeter has a 16-year-old daughter who lays out at their pool. She says a drone hovering with a camera is creepy and weird. "I just think you should have privacy in your own backyard," she said.

Merideth agrees and said he had to go see for himself. “Well, I came out and it was down by the neighbor’s house, about 10 feet off the ground, looking under their canopy that they’ve got under their back yard," Merideth said. "I went and got my shotgun and I said, ‘I’m not going to do anything unless it’s directly over my property.’"

That moment soon arrived, he said. "Within a minute or so, here it came," he said. "It was hovering over top of my property, and I shot it out of the sky. I didn't shoot across the road, I didn't shoot across my neighbor's fences, I shot directly into the air."

It wasn't long before the drone's owners appeared. "Four guys came over to confront me about it, and I happened to be armed, so that changed their minds," Merideth said. "They asked me, 'Are you the S-O-B that shot my drone?' and I said, 'Yes I am,'" he said. "I had my 40mm Glock on me and they started toward me and I told them, 'If you cross my sidewalk, there's gonna be another shooting.'"

A short time later, Merideth said the police arrived. "There were some words exchanged there about my weapon, and I was open carry – it was completely legal," he said. "Long story short, after that, they took me to jail for wanton endangerment first degree and criminal mischief...because I fired the shotgun into the air."